At last — Huffman bill offers a realistic view on water

San Francisco Chronicle

June 21, 2015Updated: June 22, 2015 3:44pm

Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle

Congressman Jared Huffman watches with others during the levee breaching event at Hamilton Army Airfield in Novato, CA, Friday April 25, 2014.
The California State Coastal Conservancy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer breeched a levee opening 648 acres of unused land on the Hamilton Army Airfield to San Francisco Bay waters in an ongoing wetlands restoration project.

Congressman Jared Huffman watches with others during the levee...

Rep. Jared Huffman’s “crowdsourced” water bill is a radical departure from the water wars, backroom deals and water grabs of the past and reframes thinking about water. He hasn’t even introduced the bill, yet we already can tell it will be significant legislation because it recognizes this: We can no longer fight over untapped water supplies. There’s nothing left.

Instead, the 120-page “discussion draft” seeks everyone’s input to find ways to stretch the water supplies we have in almost any way imaginable. (There’s even a proposal for an XPrize to develop new desalination technology.)

His decision to reveal the bill before it is introduced is unusual (and refreshing), and certainly in contrast to the secret talks that Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Republicans from the San Joaquin Valley have engaged in since last year to benefit a small group of agribusinesses. To her credit, Feinstein now is changing her tune and looking for a more comprehensive approach to water.

The bill by Huffman, D-San Rafael, abandons the divisive fish versus farms rhetoric. There are no proposals to roll back environmental protections to pump more water to farms. Instead of taking water from the salmon and delta smelt, species in a state of collapse, the bill talks about finding ways to reduce loss to evaporation of about 150,000 acre feet of water a year by covering irrigation canals with solar collectors.

Huffman would tap the 113-year-old federal Reclamation Fund, flush with $10 billion, to help pay for projects that seek to use recycled wastewater, capture storm water, increase water-use efficiency, upgrade crumbling water infrastructure, and help out drought-stricken farming communities. His bill calls for a federal tally of crops — like almonds — grown with federal water.

It has a chapter devoted to dams that calls for quickly completing the feasibility studies on the five California storage projects routinely touted by farmers and fought by environmental groups. If one or more project pencils out, build it. If they don’t, stop talking about it. (And none of these projects would help but a tiny fraction of Californians cope with drought.)

Finally, it calls for adding federal disaster planning for drought to the playbook for fires and floods.

Heavy-hitter water organizations have already offered conceptual support. Finally, a realistic approach to our scarce and most precious resource.